Universes Beckon . . .

Sunday, June 17, 2018

You know, it strikes me just now that since I did a post on
superhero moms for Mother’s Day, that I should do a post on superhero dads for
Father’s day.The thing is that comics’
relationship with fatherhood is kind of a different ball of wax.Because of the more boy-oriented past of
superhero comics, paternal narratives actually abound.

They’re filled with fathers and father figures who are
practically deified and serve as inspirations.Like Thomas Wayne, Jor-El and Ben Parker.And of course there are fathers who are
literal gods like Odin and Highfather.

There are also fathers who serve as warnings and
antagonists.Fathers like Thanos,
Darkseid, Fu Manchu and . . . oh yeah . . . Satan himself.

And we could argue that Magneto walks the line between those
two.

And then there are cases where the hero becomes a father
only for it to be undone in the name of creating more tragedy or because
editorial decided it had been a mistake in the first place.Like when Aquaman’s son Arthur Curry Jr. was killed by Black Manta.Or when
Spider-Man and Mary Jane’s child ended up being stillborn because of a
poisoning (at least there was an alternate universe comic with the child as
Spider-Girl). Or how Cyclops’s son
Nathan was infected with a sci-fi virus and then sent to the future to be
cured.And don’t even get me started on
Wolverine and his relationship with his son Daken.

The dead baby/sad dad stories are probably as close as this
category comes to the weird pregnancy stories in the other category.

So, yeah, paternal narratives are by and large about
creating pain for the hero or the hero trying to either live up to or move
beyond their father (it’s surprising how many male coming-of-age themes are
tied up with characters that aren’t even all that young anymore).

And yet, we do get some instances of father’s being
portrayed as actual human beings.Regular guys (albeit sometimes super-powered) just trying to do their
best for the world and their family.And
though few and scattered, these positive portrayals of fathers have been
appearing a lot longer than the positive portrayals of mothers.

Starting in the ‘60s, Mr. Fantastic was a father.Maybe a little boring, but he did the job
well.Going back to the ‘80s, we have
the second Ant-Man, aka Scott Lang.Though he was often a bit of a flake, he was never an evil dad or a
godlike inspiring one either.In the
‘90s we had Thunderstrike, a character who spun out from the Thor mythos.He struggled with his role a bit but always
tried to do right by his son Kevin.

Scott Lang and his daughter Cassie from the pages of a Fantastic Four comic.

A more recent example though, is Luke Cage.He had a child years ago with fellow Netflix
star Jessica Jones.Also, through a
little bit of retconning, Black Lightning has two grown daughters named Thunder
and Lightning.

And here’s a big one: both Superman and Batman are fathers
over at DC.Superman’s son Jon Kent is
the new Superboy and Batman’s son Damian Wayne is the latest Robin.There were some comic book plot tricks
employed to make both “Super Sons” 10 years old, but most comic book fans I’ve
encountered seem to find them a welcome addition.And both Clark and Bruce seem to be doing a
good job of parenting.

These are probably the best examples I can think of, aside
from more indie stuff like Saga (Marko is a pretty good dad).Most depictions of fatherhood seem to still
be of the dead dad/evil dad/angsty dad type.However, things are changing slowly but surely.

So, to all the super dads out there just trying to do your
best, Happy Father’s Day!

Sunday, May 13, 2018

In about 64 different countries on this planet, including
the United States, China, Zimbabwe, Japan and many others, the second Sunday in
May is set aside as Mothers Day.Now, it
just so happens that this Mothers Day in Japan the Toei company will release a
special for its Super Sentai fan club members entitled Hero Mama League.In this
special, three heroines from past seasons of Super Sentai (Hurricanger,
Magiranger and Dekaranger respectively) will be shown as married women and
mothers trying to balance saving the world with raising a family.Here’s a trailer.Keep in mind that it’s just the first part of the video.

To say the least, I am intrigued.For one, as a thirty-something, I’m kind of
curious to see what happens to these characters when they reach my age.For another, it shows an international
extension of a trend I’ve noticed happening in some superhero media.I’m talking about the rise of “superhero
moms”.

Before I start going on about depictions of motherhood and
maternal narratives in comic books and superhero fiction, let’s flash back to 2015.The movie Avengers: Age of Ultron has come
out.Much of the world is excited to see
how the character of Black Widow as played by Scarlett Johansson would be
developed.The reason being that by
default Black Widow had managed to become the most well-known superheroine in
the world.People were met with dismay
when the biggest developments turned out to be that she had started a romantic
relationship with Bruce Banner and the reveal that the shady espionage agency
that she had once worked for had forcibly sterilized her.It seems folks out there (notably female
movie-goers) weren’t happy with the badass super-spy’s development being reduced
down to who she was dating and whether or not she could be a mommy (the “I’m a
monster” line didn’t help either).I
bring this up because I wanted to acknowledge that I get that this stuff is . .
. tricky.While motherhood is a possible
development for female characters, the media has for too long treated it as the
ultimate development for female characters.It’s a practice that’s outdated and should be replaced with a greater variety of possibilities.However, I also wanted to bring this up
because I wanted to point out how differently comic book readers can perceive
things.You see, I just kind of shrugged
it off and thought “well, that figures”.

You see, in superhero comics heroines becoming mothers, or
any kind of maternal narratives for that matter, are very rare.I mean, it’s rare for almost any superhero to
become a parent despite some outliers, but there still seem to be paternal
narratives all over the place.Superheroes are always getting hung up on their fathers or father
figures and what their fathers said or trying to be better than their fathers
if said fathers happen to be evil.Both
of Bruce Wayne’s parents died, but when he reflects on it he usually focus on
Thomas Wayne rather than Martha.Superman’s entire planet went kablooey, and he still focuses mostly on
the loss of his father Jor-El.You get
the gist.

Now, like I said, there were outliers.At Marvel, the Inhuman Crystal had a daughter
named Luna with her husband, the mutant Avenger Quicksilver.The second Spider-Woman, Julia Carpenter,
first appeared on the scene with a school-age daughter from a failed
marriage.But the most well-recognized
superhero mom was probably the Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four.

The Invisible Woman becoming a mother was kind of an obvious
choice to make when it was made.Of the
few superheroines they had back then, she was married and the most stable.Also, the Fantastic Four already seemed like
a nuclear family with the Human Torch and the Thing subbing in as the bickering
children of the group.Looking back on
it, it was a simple no-brainer development but kind of a big deal for 1968 when
it first happened.

Most of the other times superhero comics attempted to tackle
anything related to motherhood or the pregnancies that often preceded them, the
results were . . . cringeworthy.I don’t
want to lose anyone but these examples are downright bonkers and surprisingly
heavy on continuity, but I feel the need to include all these bad
examples.Links will be provided.So, here goes . . .

So . . . yeah.Lots
of sci-fi weirdness.Lots of clumsy
riffing on the Christian nativity story.I know people like saying superheroes are modern mythology, but I think
those stories are a little bit much.Many of these stories seemed so steeped in their own weirdness that they
kind of lost track of the human element. There are more referenced in this forum thread.

But a funny thing has happened in the past decade or
so.At Marvel alone, at least a half
dozen heroines have become mothers.Off
the top of my head, they include: Jessica Jones, the original Spider-Woman,
Tigra, Jubilee, Smasher and Meggan.Six
might not seem like a lot, but it is compared to the past fifty years or so of
Marvel history.

DC, on the other hand, hasn’t been boasting as much.In fact, they kind of seem to have fewer
maternal narratives than they used to.The back stories of both Wonder Woman and Black Canary used to both
hinge on the characters’ respective mothers and now they don’t (granted, it’s
easy for Diana’s mom to get overshadowed now that they’ve revealed that her
father is Zeus).And yet, DC isn’t
completely devoid of supermoms.Batman
is now the father of 10-year old Damian Wayne, whose mother is villainess and
eco-terrorist by birth Talia Head.Talia
doesn’t seem to be a particularly good mom, but Damien will probably have
Catwoman as a stepmom soon so we’ll see how that goes.Superman also has a son named Jonathan Kent and
whose mother is Lois Lane.And though
Lane isn’t a superheroine, she’s still pretty badass.In fact, they just introduced a new character
named the Silencer, an ex-assassin who has to fight against agents from her old
life to protect her husband and three-year old son.

Not only that, they feature a number of women in different
marital and maternal situations.

The original Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew, chose to go down
the single mother route on purpose.She
reached a point in her life where she decided she wanted to have a baby, so she
got herself artificially inseminated.In
addition to providing extra agency to the character in this case, it also
proved to be rather effective bait-and-switch marketing.After releasing this rather arresting cover
online:

Fans went about speculating for a few months over who the
father was only for it to be revealed that there was no father.Or at least, no father of any importance.

Perhaps the youngest of Marvel’s supermoms (and one of my
favorite characters) is the X-Men’s own Jubilee.

I love this picture. It's just sweet.

Canonically only 18 years old, Jubilee was away in Europe
when a disaster situation struck.In the
chaos, Jubilee rescues an orphaned baby.In short order, Jubilee decides she’s going to adopt the little guy and
names him Shogo (I’m guessing the other X-Men helped grease a few wheels to
make it happen).It was an act that was
impulsive and big-hearted and in that way, very Jubilee.In its own way it also fits perfectly as a
grown-up extension of Jubilee’s character, seeing as she started as an orphan
in search of a family.Now she’s giving
Shogo what the X-Men gave her.

That’s just two examples.The story with all the supermoms is different, but most of them vary
from the more conservative situation used with the Invisible Woman back in the ‘60s.

The question becomes: why all this now?

Well, I think some of it has to do with the movies.With the rise of Marvel Studios, the dynamic
at Marvel has changed.Instead of being
primarily a comic book publisher, they’re primarily an intellectual property
and media company.The actual comic book
publishing side has turned into Research and Development to hash out new story
and character ideas to use for movies and TV shows.So, this probably gives writers a little bit
more wiggle room to do things with the personal lives of the characters.At the same time, the movies have exposed the
characters to a whole new audience including women and young girls.So, writers and artists probably want to more
positively depict events that can happen (but don’t necessarily have to) in a
woman’s life. It's a different audience than before. The superhero genre doesn't entirely have to rely on the attention of 12-year old boys anymore. That's the case with Hero Mama League too. Since it's being made for the fan club, there are likely more older fans there.

Personally, I think the whole thing is a net positive.I mean, I get if some people don’t.A lot of media, as I mentioned before, has in
the past reduced many a female character’s role to wife and mother.However, those roles are still perfectly
valid in their way.And if comics and
other superhero fiction are going to depict the role of mother, it’s better
that they depict it well and intelligently rather than writing more cosmic
messiah or fast-aging magic baby stories.

I realize I’ve only touched on just a little bit.I didn’t even mention Helen Parr from TheIncredibles.And if I push beyond
superheroes there’s Alana from the space opera comic Saga.Also, the new Duck
Tales cartoon has based a major mystery around Huey, Dewey and Louie’s mother
Della Duck.

But I think it’s time to wrap this up.But I would like to say that as a
30-something man with no kids, I have much respect for parents of every
gender.It’s a tough job and one I’m
pretty sure I couldn’t do in a million years (sometimes I feel I can barely
take care of myself).So, they’re
practically superheroes already.

So, to all the supermoms out there both real and fictional,
Happy Mothers Day!

Sunday, April 8, 2018

Okay, folks.I’m
going to talk about one of my favorite manga and anime series.So hang on folks, it might get a bit . . .
spicy.

A little background on myself first.I’ve been a manga fan since the early 2000s
when it hit big on the American comics scene, especially as something sold in
book stores.Anime, on the other hand,
was a little more elusive.During those
days, anime was mainly found on DVD releases and bit torrents with some limited
airings on TV (mainly stuff like Cartoon Network’s Toonami).Streaming services that aired it like
Crunchyroll were barely even a thing yet.Or at least, were barely acknowledged as a thing in the days before
Netflix brought streaming to the mainstream.So, since I was familiar with American comics, it was as manga that I
most embraced these stories.However, it’s
also probably because I was so used to American comics and the whole superhero
scene that I tended to seek out things other than typical fantasy action
stories to read as manga.Namely,
detective stories, sports stories and cooking stories.And it’s that last one that I’m going to talk
about here.

The manga/anime in question is Food Wars, known in Japan as Shokugeki
no Soma.And yes, it’s a very
popular series, but I’m going to talk about it anyway.

FoodWars is a cooking manga.A cooking manga that I’ve been hooked on
since volume one (not to sound hipster-ish, but “way before it was popular”).It’s also a manga that hinges rather heavily
on cooking competitions.The funny thing
is that while I like cooking, I’ve never really cared for cooking competition
shows.But manga has a way of getting me
to read about things that aren’t in my usual repertoire.I also don’t particularly like football, but
would not pass up a volume of Eyeshield
21.

The story of Food Wars
is about a young man named Soma Yukihira.Soma loves to cook and work alongside his father at the little local
family restaurant that they work at.Soma is also very competitive and has lost against his father in cooking
competitions over a hundred times.He
also likes to create strange new dishes and overly enjoys seeing people try
them, even when they’re awful.One day,
Soma’s father announces that he’s closing up shop to go travelling and that he’s
enrolling Soma in the Totsuki Institute, an elite culinary high school that’s so
strict and so competitive that it only has a 1% graduation rate.It’s an intimidating place and Soma doesn’t
make it any easier for himself, managing to piss off practically the entire
school and get on the bad side of the headmaster’s granddaughter on the first
day (though he does make a few friends in the Polaris Dormitory).Can a plucky, blue-collar diner brat succeed
and thrive in a competitive school full of culinary elites?Well, let’s just say that it’s a good thing
Soma never gives up.

So, that’s basically the gist of it.But you may be wondering: how do you make a
manga or anime about food?Food is about
one part visual and nine parts smell and taste.Well, this is part of what makes Food Wars popular but also
infamous.You see, this isn’t the first
series based around food.Others have
existed and what they have focused on is the visual of people reacting to the
food.One series, Yakitate Ja-Pan, is a manga (and later anime) about baking
bread.One thing that series did was
show people reacting to how good the bread was in really big, over-the-top
ways.Another series which hinged a lot
on food was the slice-of-life show Gourmet
Girl Graffiti.And one thing that
show did was make the reactions a lot smaller but also a bit more. . . alluring (a little moan here, a little “ooh”
there, but nothing too explicit).What
Food Wars did was combine both of these reactions and, well, let me just show
you a clip . . .

Yeah.I know, right.For the artist Shun Saeki, this is actually
kind of up his alley.He drew hentai
(pornographic manga) before moving to relatively tamer fare.

So, Food Wars is a
cooking competition manga aimed at teenage boys (did I mention this was a
Shonen title?) with uncommonly provocative artwork.Is that it?Is that all there is to it?Well,
not quite.There are other little bits
that give a little added depth of flavor.Self-expression through cooking becomes a pretty big theme.Classism is an underlying theme as well,
especially as it concerns how other cooks interact with Soma.There’s even a big status quo shake-up at one
point that manages to shift the whole concept from cooking to survive high
school to cooking as act of rebellion.But my favorite, somewhat low key, theme is that of finding one’s own
tribe.It’s a big theme in a lot of pop
culture these days and butts right into the whole “found family” thing
(currently exemplified by the Fast and the Furious movies, but X-Men has been
doing it since the ‘80s and Joss Whedon has been doing it since the late ‘90s).The “tribe” in this case are the students who
live at the Polaris Dormitory.While
most of the Totsuki students are rich and manage to live off campus, there are
a certain few students who have to live in the dorm.They’re also all kind of crazy, kind of
quirky and practically experts in their own cooking methods.Yuki Yoshino is a specialist in cooking wild
game.Shun Ibusaki is an expert in
smoking food.Zenji Marui is a master of
the more academic side of cooking.And
Ryoko Sakaki is a specialist in the art of fermentation.And that’s just a handful of the characters
there.There’s just something gratifying
about watching all these mad food geniuses interact.They become their own little pseudo-family of
fantastic characters and they become even more important around volume 17 when
they take in a rather important new roommate (I won’t tell you who in case you
want to read it for yourself).I’ve said
before that the Polaris Dormitory is Food
Wars’ secret weapon and I stick by that.

It’s not perfect, though.And a lot of the flaws in Food
Wars have to do directly with the main character, Soma Yukihira.First of all, Food Wars has always had a bit of stakes problem.Basically, the stakes were always a bit too
high.Soma would get into cooking
competitions called Shokugeki rather regularly.But the stakes of the competitions would almost always be that Soma
would have to give up cooking or would be expelled from Totsuki.This means that Soma pretty much always has
to win, because if he doesn’t win then the series would have to end as it lost
its main character.So, it becomes less
a question of “Will Soma win this?” as “How will Soma win this?”And while that’s fine, it would have been
nice if there were a few more smaller stakes competitions that Soma could have
lost and learned from along the way.The
other problem with Soma is that, well, he’s a bit of a dope.Okay, that’s a bit harsh.But he is a bit one-track, which makes him
seem a bit duller and less complex than the other characters.There are some really good characters in this
series.Megumi Tadokoro is a great
character who evolves from a timid little country girl to a culinary fighter.Akira Hayama is a great character, especially
when it comes to his past and complicated relationship with his guardian.Erina Nakiri is a great, complex character
and has one of the most significant character arcs in the series.Meanwhile, Soma’s entire character is about
getting better at cooking and getting others to acknowledge that he’s good at
cooking.That’s basically it.However, the fact that he’s always learning
from his classmates and from his own mistakes as well as his own mistakes
somehow allows him to act as a catalyst for pretty much every other character’s
growth.Again, that’s fine, but I wouldn’t mind having a
little more.

But that’s enough of that.If I haven’t convinced you to check it out yet, then I’m probably not
going to.But I sure hope you do,
because for all its craziness and infamy, Food
Wars is a series worth biting into.

Saturday, February 24, 2018

You know, I really should write for Universes Beckon more
than I do.But sometimes there isn’t
much I can write about.What’s been
happening in pop culture?Well, there
was some Muppet related stuff.Playhouse
Disney released an intro for their new version of Muppet Babies and people got
upset about a new character.Also,
Nerdist reported that Disney is working on a new Muppets show for their new
streaming service.Okay, I guess this is
it.Let’s talk about Muppets!

The issue in question for Muppet Babies is that the new
version of it is introducing a new female character named Summer Penguin who
will be a regular on the pre-school centered show alongside the characters of
Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie Bear and Animal.Characters from the previous version of
Muppet Babies Rowlf and Scooter are apparently not going to be on the show and
the argument could be made that Summer is replacing another made-for-animation
Muppet Baby: Skeeter.The impact of the
original Muppet Babies cartoon is a tricky thing to judge.Muppet Babies is one of those “gap period”
spin-offs (in this case, occurring between The Muppets Take Manhattan and
Muppet Christmas Carol) that doesn’t seem like a big deal in the grand history
of the Muppets franchise but came around at just the right time to be the face
of the franchise for a lot of children of the ‘80s and ‘90s.So, for those kids who are now parents,
Skeeter was as much part of the gang as anybody.I’m not really stressing over it myself.In terms of characters, the more the
merrier.And I doubt Summer Penguin will
be brought into the main cast for other projects.Though, it is concerning that there is
apparently such a dearth of memorable female characters in the franchise that
they had to create a new one for both versions (what, they couldn’t have stuck
Janice in there).And even more
confusing is that the show is aimed at pre-schoolers when the original show was
aimed at the normal 6-11 Saturday morning demographic (though I wish the show
luck).But I’ll get back to that in a
minute.

Honestly, as big a fan as I am, I tend to approach most
Muppets projects these days with a bit of caution.They seem to be a tricky property to get
right or do successfully.

Before moving on, let’s address the Snuffleupagus in the
room: yes, the Muppets have been different
since Jim Henson died back in the ‘90s.It’s an event I remember well.Henson was a childhood hero of mine.But we have to also admit that every media property is going to have to
deal with the loss of their creator eventually, if they’re going to last long
term.And we can’t know that Henson’s
productions would have kept the same vibe if he had lived another twenty years.There’s many a creator who has lost his or
her touch over time.We have to focus on
what Henson put into his projects at the beginning and where they’ve gone from
there.

The real issue seems to have started after the Walt Disney
Company bought The Muppets.From the
beginning, I don’t think they were quite sure who they were going to aim these
characters at.They had some Disney Channel
shorts in which the Muppets interacted with some very small children.They also had some shorts in which they
played music from Disney Channel original movies with the stars of said movies.So, they seemed to move from preschoolers to
middle schoolers pretty darn quick.

After that we got the Jason Segel movie The Muppetsand its sequel Muppets Most Wanted.Now, these movies were
good.I liked them both a lot.However, they also kind of turned the Muppets
into a nostalgia act.The premises of
both movies kind of call back to the Muppets’ two earliest films The Muppet Movieand The Great Muppet Caper(word is, the
third movie would have been called Muppets
on Broadway, calling back to The Muppets Take Manhattan).The movies
had good jokes, good energy, good songs and lots of heart but were clearly
evoking nostalgia.While the first movie
did really well at the box office, the second one decidedly didn’t.This might be a sign that nostalgia as a tool
only goes so far.

But then came the Muppets TV show on ABC.

The Muppets was a show done in a documentary style similar
to The Office which followed the Muppets as they put on a late night talk show
starring Miss Piggy.One of the main
aspects of the show was that it was a “more adult” take on the Muppets.

There’s one problem with making a Muppets production “for
adults”.The Muppets were never
specifically aimed at kids in the first place.No, really.Just ask any Muppet fan.Heck, ask Frank Oz
(performer of Fozzie Bear and Miss Piggy).He’s on Twitter.

So, what did they do to make the show “more adult”?

Well, Piggy and Kermit split up.This prompted Piggy to struggle to redefine
herself outside of the relationship.Kermit
then seemed to go into a midlife crisis in which he overate and dated a younger
woman . . . er . . . pig.The once
daring Gonzo had lost his nerve as a daredevil and settled into life as a mediocre
comedy writer.The Electric Mayhem have
settled into life as an in-studio band.Fozzie had a decidedly awkward relationship with a human woman.And a good chunk of the humor stemmed from
the staff dealing with Piggy’s more outrageous demands all while she treated
most of her friends like garbage.

Does any of this sound at all appealing?Or funny?Or like the good old Muppets we know and love?Well, maybe to some people but
not enough because the show lost viewers really early on and underwent a revamp
midway through to bring in “more joy” and a new antagonist to take some of the
heat off of Piggy.It was a nice change,
but it didn’t save the show.

Really, what it did wasn’t make the show “more adult” as
much as it made it “more sad”.It felt
like their dreams of performance had become a grind and the friendships they
had devolved into a sort of work-a-day office familiarity.All the characters felt like they had gotten
old and settled.And we’re so used to
seeing them strive that seeing them settle is rather off-putting.And this isn’t just a problem with the
Muppets, it’s a problem with how we view adulthood in general.But I’ll get back to that one too.

But let’s run with this idea for a little while.The Muppets as characters not only for
adults, but as adult characters themselves.How does that wash?Well, let’s
see.Going back to the Muppet Show, they’re
a group of professional performers well aware of the ups and downs of show
business.They had complicated relationships
(Piggy loved Kermit.Kermit didn’t love
Piggy.Gonzo loved Piggy.Piggy was annoyed by Gonzo.Gonzo moved on to find real love with Camilla).They had a family of sorts in each other and
they looked out for each other.And
despite the craziness, they all worked toward fulfilling their one primary
responsibility: making sure the show went on.It wasn’t always easy, either.They always seemed to be a day late and a dollar short with the threat
of Scooter’s uncle kicking them out of his theater always looming.

I have a little book of Henson-related quotes titled Wisdom from It’s Not Easy Being Green.There’s a quote from Henson himself that says
“The most sophisticated people I know-
inside they’re all children.We never
really lose a certain sense we had when we were kids.”

And that’s it, really.The Muppets aren’t childish.They
can just see the world the way children often do.They’re optimists and idealists.They keep their ping-pong ball eyes and felt
hearts open.They’re adults who believe
that dreams are worth chasing, laughter is the best medicine, nothing beats a
good song sung together and that even failing is okay if you do it with your
crazy showbiz family by your side.They’re
the ones at the Magic Store.The ones
who’ve found the Rainbow Connection.

The Muppets are the adults that a lot of us wish we could be.And I think the fact that so many of us see
adulthood as something depressing and filled with drudgery and unwanted
compromise is probably not the healthiest way to go about it.How long can we go around acting like
becoming an adult is the equivalent of having the joy and optimism beaten out
of us before it causes more harm than good?

I think that ultimately this is a little bit of Jim Henson
himself that he baked into all these characters and concepts.And I think that unflappable “youthful”
optimism is why people continually misjudge who his creations are for.The new Muppet Babies may be for
pre-schoolers, but the original wasn’t.It was for school-age children but a lot of people probably think it was
for really little kids.Fraggle Rock was
for older kids too, but people would often lump it in the same category as
Sesame Street.And The Muppet Show was a
variety show for the whole family and Henson’s way of proving he wasn’t just a
children’s entertainer, and most people still refer to it as a children’s show.Oh, well.

Henson may be gone, but that positive attitude shouldn’t be
hard to sustain.It really shouldn’t.Either in a Muppet TV show or in life.

There’s more that could be said about goings on in the
Muppet world and what makes the characters work.The performer who played Kermit, Steve
Whitmire, recently got fired and replaced by Matt Vogel.Also, I’ve been following Frank Oz on Twitter
and he’s said some interesting things about how much of the camaraderie between
the Muppet characters actually came from the Muppet performers.But I think I’d leave you instead with
another quote from Mr. Henson:

“I believe that we
form our own lives, that we create our own reality, and that everything works
out for the best.I know I drive some
people crazy with what seems like ridiculous optimism, but it has always worked
out for me.”